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Ladies, There Is No Honor in “Struggle love”
The idea that you must endure unnecessary pain & suffering in a relationship is toxic AF.
Love is beautiful, but it should never come at the cost of your sanity.
That was one statement my grandma repeated every summer when we girls came over to visit. For 59 years, she was married to my grandpa, a drunkard who made life difficult for everyone. Yet no matter what wrong he did, she never left with him.
We thought her staying with him was honorable, but as we grew up, we got to understand that grandma’s iconic words were a plea to us not to repeat her choices.
In essence, grandma was warning us against… struggle love.
Struggle love is a relationship where one person is doing all the heavy lifting needed to keep the relationship afloat, while the other just coasts along.
I’ve noticed that Black women have been conditioned to put up with “struggle love” far more than any other demographic. How? The idea of the ride-or-die chick, superwoman, Oh and my old-time favorite… strong black queen, they all seemed to have good intentions.
But in reality, those phrases just reinforce Black women being treated as though they…
